In positivistsociology, social facts are the social structures and cultural norms and values that are external to, and coercive of, actors (Ritzer 2000:73). Social facts would be represented by social norms or social institutions within the collective conscience or collective representations, which is internalized by individuals as morals which inevitably constrain their behaviour (Marshall 1994: 486). Examples would be law or the suicide rate in a given community.

The term was coined by 19th century French sociologist Émile Durkheim and was crucial to Durkheim's analysis of society (and to that of his followers). Where Auguste Comte dreamed of making sociology an all-encompassing discipline that contained all others—'the queen of sciences', in his terms— Durkheim was less ambitious. Durkheim aimed to set sociology on a firm, positivist footing, as a science among other sciences. He reasoned that any particular science must have unique subject matter which is not shared with any other science, but which must be susceptible to investigation by empirical means. Variations within the phenomena under investigation, according to Durkheim, must be explained by causes which also lie within the realm of that particular science. In consequence, Durkheim asserted that sociology must become the 'science of social facts'. "Sociological method as we practice it rests wholly on the basic principle that social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual.... ...if no reality exists outside of the individual consciousness, it [sociology] wholly lacks any material of its own." (Suicide, p. 37-8, quoted in Hoult, p. 298)

In Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim wrote: "A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an influence, or an external constraint."

In Durkheim's view, sociology was simply 'the science of social facts'. The task of the sociologist, then, was to search for correlations between social facts and thus reveal laws. Having discovered the laws of social structure, the sociologist is then able to determine if any given society is 'healthy' or 'pathological' and prescribe appropriate remedies.

Durkheim's work on the 'social fact' of suicide rates is famous. By carefully examining police suicide statistics in different districts, Durkheim was able to 'demonstrate' that Catholic communities have a lower suicide rate than Protestants, and ascribe this to a social (as opposed to individual) cause. This was groundbreaking work and remains much-cited even today. Initially, Durkheim's 'discovery of social facts' was seen as significant because it promised to make it possible to study the behaviour of entire societies, rather than just of particular individuals. Modern sociologists refer to Durkheim's studies for two quite different purposes, however:

As graphic demonstrations of how careful the social researcher must be to ensure that data gathered for analysis is accurate. Durkheim's reported suicide rates were, it is now clear, largely an artifact of the way in which particular deaths were classified as 'suicide' or 'non-suicide' by different communities. What he had actually discovered was not different suicide rates at all—it was different ways of thinking about suicide.

As an entry point into the study of social meaning, and the way in which apparently identical individual acts often cannot be classified empirically. Social acts (even such an apparently private and individual act as suicide), in this modern view, are always seen (and classified) by social actors. Discovering the 'social facts', it follows, is generally neither possible nor desirable, but discovering the way in which individuals perceive and classify particular acts offers a great deal of insight.

A total social fact [fait social total] is "an activity that has implications throughout society, in the economic, legal, political, and religious spheres." (Sedgewick 2002: 95) "Diverse strands of social and psychological life are woven together through what he [Mauss] comes to call 'total social facts'. A total social fact is such that it informs and organises seemingly quite distinct practices and institutions." (Edgar 2002:157) The term was popularized by Marcel Mauss in his The Gift and coined by his student Maurice Leenhardt after Durkheim.